Early Learning Matters Week 2020

We opened our first Fit Kidz service in Glenwood in 2004 with the goal of providing high-quality care and learning for every child we were privileged enough to care for. This continues to remain our goal every day and we never lose focus on the value and importance of our role in the lives of children and their families.

We know that the first five years of life are crucial to children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. When children have inclusive, positive, and rich early learning experiences, they are more likely to go on to become successful learners, with high levels of wellbeing. It is our responsibility to provide an environment in which this can happen with a dedicated team to nurture the needs of each child.

Here I invite one of our wonderful Educators, Min Williams, to share the reason she became an Early Childhood Educator.

“My story around having a career in early childhood education and care seems to vary from many of my colleagues. I did not foresee a grand impact on little people and a belief in embedding a piece of me in all of them. I didn’t consider shaping little minds and exploring critical thinking in the next generation. Though, of course, this is what I firmly believe now.

My start in early childhood education and care occurred as a stepping stone for my further goal to teach in a Primary School and an easier way to get there with days full of cuddles and playing in sand pits. Not to take anything away from our Primary sector colleagues, but this is simply not what I see for myself anymore. I truly believe, and research supports, that the growth of brain development that occurs in the first 5 years is never matched again in people throughout their entire lives. That is a remarkable fact but also hints at the gravity our role as educators carries. In those first 5 years we can empower children to be curious, we can facilitate their desire for peer learning, we can foster a sense of identity. It really is limitless. We have the flexibility in our frameworks where we can follow children’s leads in play and learning to establish and deliver a curriculum that is not just educational, but specific and relevant to the children participating in it.

It is my vision to create a world where children are encouraged to be uniquely themselves. That their individual dispositions and styles of learning are not just catered for but are revered and celebrated. That children are respected as equals in our community and have their voices heard. Just how capable and competent children are is truly remarkable.

Having three children of my own and some additional needs thrown in the mix, has only strengthened my vision for children. I can see in my own children how laying the foundation of a strong sense of wellbeing and thirst for knowledge has served them to become the confident and capable young people they are now. We share a deep level of respect with each other and the world around us which makes me endlessly proud of my role as a mother and also an educator.”

… and this is why EARLY LEARNING MATTERS!